


The Comfort We Seek

by CheshireCity



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:25:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheshireCity/pseuds/CheshireCity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Student and a savior of the world, Shinji Ikari is trying to move on with his adult life - despite remembering only fragments of what came before. A chance meeting with the ghost of an old friend grants him the strength he didn't know he possessed and the keys to his own happiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Comfort We Seek

When I woke, the world had cracked out of its covers, a fleshy, no-longer-embryonic world still shaking off the pieces of white shell. They said words like “it was over”. They said words like “we won”. I guess it’s more of a subjective thing, isn’t it? But we were alive, and that had to count for something. I just knew it had to.

I was no different than this fledging planet; ten months, they told me, I had spent in the caress of a coma. It seemed fitting, in the end. I had read the newspapers to fill in all the gaps, both from my sleep and the time before. It was fuzzy, I couldn’t trust it. My memory, I mean. It can be subjective if you choose for it to be. I learned about the disaster at NERV’s main headquarters from every angle imaginable – it was hard not to when it breached every level of ethical, social, governmental, and financial uncertainty possible. They thought I was dead when they first found me; I would have been if the rescue team hadn’t tried persistently to find the pulse that was barely there. Most of the others were gone. Faces, people, identities I had known. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it all. The average human would say that I should feel sadness or loss, but it was so much more complex than just those identifiers. Emotions weren’t that simple. _People_ weren’t that simple.

I knew I couldn’t be this person without them, so I let them become part of my past-self. I was reborn. Ten months, a warm ten months curled in the womb of the hospital sheets, fed by the umbilical cord of the TPN bags. And when I emerged, I was someone new. I was Shinji Ikari, yes, but I was a new one. One that was deserving of love. That had suffered but was still here. And that was a good thing.

Maybe, just maybe, those people I had known were resting. Peaceful. I remember seeing their faces sliding into focus all about me, smiling. I think we all were together in death for a moment: I just happened to be the only one to escape from its finality. That’s what made their passing so difficult: I think they were happy, that it wasn’t a loss in the way the media thinks. They got the rest they deserved.

I left the confusing snapshot fragments and conflicting feelings to that old Shinji Ikari.

I wasn’t running, not this time. I was healing.

Things weren’t easy.

The move was the first step. I let the government workers enter the apartment, boxes stuffed under their arms, pointing to the room that had been mine. Leaned over the balcony, staring at the sky, anywhere, just away from that place that contained too many images and smells and sensations. One of the men returned, asking with awkwardness if that was really all there was to pack. I confirmed it was, purposefully sending him a small smile. I wanted at least a part of his identity to be a positive, kindly one. 

They installed me into the dorms: a single bedroom with a pocket sized kitchen and bathroom. It felt too big for myself alone and my lack of personal items seemed to echo this back. The walls were sterile and white, a little cream container: but I had already been born, I was only a month old. So I threw open the window and let the light in. 

School was next to impossible at the beginning. There were so many questions and so few people left, it seemed. They plied me gently with little apologies and salutations for my health. I didn’t know how to feel about it all, but I gave them careful smiles; I did appreciate them, after all. They didn’t have to expend that kind of worry. I tried to pay attention to lecture, but that was even harder than engaging in conversation. That was something that didn’t get easier. Never before had I experienced problems paying attention, but little pinpricks of words left me breathless. The pain tingled through my hands and I stared hard at the coarse composition of my notepaper until it was all drowned out and calm again.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. My fingers curled into tiny balls, fluttering back open like tiny wings. One, two, three, four. Breathing in slow tandem. Clench, relax, clench, relax. Inhale exhale. Seventeen times and then everything was safe again. My world continued spinning again.

Did you know it takes seventeen muscles to produce a smile?

Seventeen syllables make up the haiku.

Seventeen was also despised by the Pythagoreans, and I guess I like that fact because I once thought I was hated, too. Though I suppose most people would find it odd to have sympathy for a number.

There are also seventeen chromosomes that make up an apple, and E** was seventeen when she fed the apple to A***. But that last one isn’t something I can think about, because the fire scorches back through my veins and I choke on liquid and blood that isn’t there anymore. So then I have to start the process all over again to make things right.

I finished my academic year over the Internet.

My therapist told me the next year would be better, and I agreed: I would make it better. She gave me a journal and told me to write in it whenever I had words I was too afraid to say. I didn’t like explaining those words when we had our sessions, but the stitch in my chest seemed to ease over time and I relented to it. Mostly I filled it with little lines. Five, drawn like little matchsticks, one for each finger.

She asked me what the significance of five was, but I couldn’t tell her. I had only prepared facts about the number seventeen. I was all set to go on seventeen. 

The school year went smoothly, even though I didn’t accomplish my goal of making a new friend. Some of the kids I had known moved back to Tokyo-3, and it was like meeting new people all over again. I hadn’t given them enough credit before. The shock felt like being suddenly submerged: humanity, humans… we all fear in the end, don’t we? See only ourselves – not selfishly, but self-consciously. I didn’t know how common it was to fear hate and rejection. It made my emotions feel silly and contrived, but my therapist told me otherwise. It was still _my_ reality, wasn’t it? I just hadn’t been prepared to realize that it was the reality of Self for so many others, too.

I came to understand these classmates in different ways than I’d ever considered before. That the other Shinji Ikari couldn’t have managed. There was a kind of glowing pride in that.

The newspapers piled up in my room, perhaps out of habit. NERV was an acronym of the past, like Gehirn before it. They had their own ghosts to deal with, and I had mine. The infantile world was toddling on, awkward but confident about its purpose. The MAGI were disassembled, the buildings shut down, systematically being covered by the sand of the hourglass. 

The next dorm was more spacious than the first. It didn’t feel like it, not with the school binders and newspapers and CD cases. The cello propped up against the wall in its case, long since recovered from its origin beneath the bed. The music stand obstructed the nightstand, the pages it held scattered about the area and coffee-ringed from study. Pink ceramic bowls stacked up by the stove cycled in and out of the rooms, returned only to be cleaned. They nourished the thin black cat that frequented the area. I wanted to keep her, but there was only so much I could do. But she loved me, and rubbed her cheeks against my calves when I brought her meals, marking me as her family, and that was enough.

It was funny to think that these things that symbolized me had settled so comfortably into the space. Had managed to fill it. 

When my therapist smiled, I returned the gesture with honesty. Seventeen muscles weren’t so many, really. 

Seventeen was when the internship was delivered to my little apartment. Perhaps it was a consolation prize for the old Shinji Ikari, but I took it gratefully – the pay was minimal, but the fact that it was included at all was something to jump at – and applied to the UN’s local chapter. They were happy to receive me when I stepped off the train, schoolbag still in hand. I was aware of the discomfort that could arise. The paperwork and notary work went with quasi-mindless ease. The people were friendly and I found surprise enjoyment in their acquaintance. No, in their friendship. 

That was when the trip came up. My manager gave me a mixed look, full of emotions I was still learning to read. He handed me the forms and spoke in measured words. Informed me that we were overseeing the closure of a government building. The headquarters of SEELE, as it were. I nodded with indifference and penned my name in the infinite blank spaces. It wasn’t as if I knew the location personally, it wasn’t as if they had Evas or other relics of the old Shinji Ikari. I turned the forms in and returned to my desk to type up a report on relations with New Seoul-4. 

Still, I spent the lunch break scribbling in my journal. Rows of five little lines, stacked on top of each other like the sandwich I consumed. I continued the horizontal jaunts even as a coworker took a seat beside me. I had gotten better about that, the privacy issues. People weren’t as discriminating nor as attentive as I had once feared they were. They cared, they just didn’t know how to show it always. The girl craned her neck to watch my work. At leisure she asked if I was composing.

Composing? 

Yes, as I was a cellist, wasn’t I? That was me, right?

Yeah, I had told some of them that, hadn’t I? They’d even shown up at a few small concerts around the area. That sort of recognition was nice; it was a facet of my identity that I had molded chiefly on my own.

But no, I wasn’t writing music. Why?

Five bars like that? Like a sheet of music, right?

I brought it up to my therapist before the trip commenced. She raised a brow and scanned the pages, letting the book rest against her thighs. She wanted to know if my coworker was right. I said I didn’t know and held fast to the slip of paper she gave me at the close of the session. The next day I nearly embraced the pill bottle they signed for in gratefulness. 

Things weren’t easy.

I wasn’t running, not this time. I was healing.

The drive to the facility had taken longer than I anticipated, and I crawled out of the cab, stretching and creaking like the incessant cicadas that plagued the city. But it was fitting; we were both sturdy throughout the draining of sand. Still here, still alive. And that was something to be proud of.

The years had taken their toll; our white masks were proof enough of that as flashlights shone hazy beams through the darkness and the dust. I tailed my manager with quiet interest, jotting down numbers and figures as they were read aloud. The computer terminals were mute as we passed through their graveyard, murky blankets covering their once-shining faces and keys. The information they contained was no longer of use to this new world. And that was something to be proud of, too.

At the lunch break, we set up camp like true explorers, nestled between the boulders of antiquated technology and cables. The girls joked about its obscureness as a picnic and passed around the bento they had prepared. We laughed in the dusk of the space and I knew that it was the first true humanity to touch the site since its inception. Happiness was its own torch, when it came down to it. My manager and the team leader talked excitedly and declared an hour extension to our break, much to the jubilation of my peers. We would get to access a different arm of the facility, they scolded gently, as if to remind us of our purpose there. The fear of the past was already long gone. The generator would take a while to charge up the terminal operating the metal doors in the East Wing. What did it matter to us? We had more time to ourselves.  
Time. That was a concept that tasted sweet to the senses.

I let the others sink into conversation, content with my lot surveying them. Because I wasn’t on the outside anymore, wasn’t running. I was living, and appreciating that life in others. With an absent mind I took up a light of my own, excusing myself to find the restrooms that were still said to have running water. Instead I took the leisure to wander, to run my fingertips over the walls and the derelict rails of the balconies and stairs, just feeling. Drumming them in a five-beat pattern. Was it from a desire to compose? The notion produced a seventeen-muscle smile.

I found myself before a door painted in red and cringed before the brash colour, latently wondering why it produced such an effect on me. I crept inside, coughing as the musty odor choked down my nose and throat, squinting as my flashlight reflected off of murky surfaces. A few steps down, the door clanged behind me, bumping on the latch that was left extended. Familiarity overwhelmed me and I gasped, gasped, gasped. Chest tight, shaking, huffing little pants through flared nostrils, clenched teeth. One, two, three, four. It felt like the veins were being stripped from my palms, the muscle burning away from the bones of my fingers. Five, six, seven, eight. Inhale exhale. Grab, control, protect, hide. I broke the notions apart in my mind. Cleaved them in two as I remembered my friends somewhere upstairs. Remembered the peace that was obtained somewhere by somepeople somehow. It felt so long ago…

A tube skewered the center of the round room, dead cords hanging around it, off of it. I recalled the hospital, my umbilical cord to existence. It was so cold here. Without knowing why, I approached, fiery palm to the glass. I’m on fire, god, I am on fire. The shock of realization, submersion. The iciness of the glass slowed down my heart, soothed the pain in my hands. I wiped at it slowly, clearing away the dust and the disrepair. A putrid orange lay beneath. I recoiled at the sight of it, the coagulated gel barely moving in its container.

Eject. Eject. Plug. Connect. Ratios. Danger. Danger. Please.

Balled fists banging on the glass, scratching at the hinges, and latches. 

Eject. Eject. Eject.

No, it wasn’t like back then. That old world, that…

And the gel came rushing out in a noxious, oozing tide as the door swung open. I shook. There were no thoughts for moments. Everything felt distant, so distant, like something I could recline and watch. But it was my own body that I could view, my own numb actions. No, that was right, wasn’t healthy. I was doing better than that.

Elsewhere there was a trembling, a soft groan and a sliding. The jellied LCL tumbled away as he rolled over. I was the first thing he saw upon his birth.

I froze all over again.

Kaworu grinned, bloody red eyes angled in amusement. He stood, shakily at first and then with growing confidence as the new set of limbs leapt into motion. He brushed himself off hastily, hardly letting those eyes leave me, hardly even for seconds at a time. It was as though nothing had happened, as though nothing had changed.

But it had. So, so much had.

“H-how?” I chocked around the words. I could breathe again, yet… My vision of him blurred and I blinked hard to bring it back into focus once more, praying it was real, that this was reality, my reality, true reality. My fingers clenched systematically beside me without their usual symptomatic accompaniments. I felt the unevenness of my nails bite half moons into my skin. Reality. And yet…

My arms embraced him, encircled him and he felt _warm_ and _human_ and _alive_. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t make sense, but he was laughing, that soft breath against my ear those thin fingers pressing gently against my scalp. LCL smeared across my forehead, rested against his collarbone and he soothed me, calmly in that way from so long ago it seemed. The humming that surrounded us evened out and I recognized my own voice with foreign awareness. “I’m so sorry. I love you too. Thank you, thank you, I love, Kaworu I’m sorry, Kaworu.”

Warm lips silenced mine, moving in a familiar rhythm and I melted into it with ease. The arms around my waist drew me closer and I relented freely, enjoying the only praise that could go unspoken yet mean so much. He nuzzled my cheek with the bridge of his nose as we broke apart. “You’re sweaty.” I mumbled, looking away.

“I’m not.” He returned softly. “You were crying.” Barely calloused hands cupped the wetted surface of my cheeks in proof, smearing away any remnants.

All those years and I couldn’t cry. This didn’t even feel like sadness. Just honesty. Brutal, honest feeling.

My fingers worked their way firmly against the skin of his arms. “Don’t go away. I need you, Kaworu. I couldn’t say that before, but I do. I need you.”

“Do you?” he returned. Cruelty was absent and still he held me by the waist. “You’ve changed, Shinji.” He noted, adopting a smile swiftly. “For the better. And I… I’m not the same, either.” He looked pointedly about the room, the one that mirrored the chamber Rei had been born in again and again.

That’s right. They were both synthetic people. Or had been. Beautiful bodies to eternally hold the souls of the dawn of creation. A*** and L*****. One created by SEELE, the other by NERV. Even if they were vessels, that spirit, that being that loved me, that showed the first affection I’d ever known was there, was _here_ in the midst of all this hell, this chaos.

“You’re still Kaworu Nagisa.” I said simply, unable to keep the desperation from my features, from the grip of my hands, the inclination of my body towards his. “You remember- ”

“Always, it’s uploaded. You know that.”

“But you’re still- .”

“I had wanted this. The death you had given m- .”

“NO. I won’t accept that. Not now that you’re here. Right here, right in front of me.”

It was flooding back, all the sensations of the past. But this time I wasn’t afraid. The pain in my hands didn’t come, the air passed through my lungs in agitated but healthy bursts. Despite everything I felt stable, safe. 

Kaworu Nagisa.

The Fifth Child.

The Seventeenth Angel.

Tabris.

That’s what they had called him. But he was still Kaworu Nagisa. I still loved him, not just what he’d done for me, the comfort he had provided. 

“I shouldn’t be here.” He said quietly. “I know what I am, this isn’t right. I can’t- .”

“I won’t accept it.”

“Shinji.”

I paused under his gaze, returning it with equal fire for the first time. The recognition in his look gave me shivers. He never needed to verbalize his praise to make me feel it. 

“This form, this false creation… it will just perpetuate things. I won’t want to, but the reality of what I am will surface and I will be a danger again.”

“You can escape that.” I interjected. “What you are, that’s just society’s construct. I don’t apply to that, not anymore. You’re free now because you’re alive. You aren’t restricted by what you are.”

“But I am restricted by _who_ I am.” 

“You’re Kaworu Nagisa.” I said quietly. The warmth of his hand cradled me and I knew I must be tearing up again. “And I love you. And I won’t lose you. I can’t give up on you, not when you gave me so much. I can’t hurt you again, I can’t… can’t go through that, don’t you understand? I’m healing, but it’s so hard being alone on the inside. Having acceptance and having love, but having it only as an external kind. You… were – are – the only one beyond just that. Saw me internally, without hope and without resolve and you still loved me. I can’t endure that loneliness, please.”

Soft kisses fell upon my shoulders, small nuzzles of apology coupling their descent. Kaworu looked at the narrow space between us, not wanting to see my eyes. But he did. Reality never gave him pause for long. “You can,” he edged. “You can endure without me – you already are. This identity is one I cherish, one that you have given me. But who am I? Who are we? When we break down our names, well, our first are both written out in simpler writing, without kanji. We’re a string of sounds and symbols, we’re nothing but a construct. But our surnames, the placeholders that give us history and our first, most crucial identities? Have you ever thought about them, Shinji? ‘Ikari’ as you write it means ‘anchor’, it means stability and lasting existence, even in the course of chaos.”

“But ‘Nagisa’,” I interrupt. “that means ‘shore’: it supplies the water and the horizon to reach towards. I can’t be an anchor without something to ground me, Kaworu. I can’t stay the course if there is no tide to challenge me.”

His grip relaxed on my hips and I whimpered unconsciously in protest, hungry for the comfort and the contact that only he was ever free or permitted to give. His fingers wound around mine in condolence as he brought them to the valley between our chests, holding the backs against our hearts.

“‘Nagisa’ means more than just that. It means my fate. When broken down, it becomes ‘shisha’… ‘dead person’. I was named for what had to transpire; we can always alter our actions, our mentality, our perceptions of ourselves, our world, but we can’t alter who we are. You’ve grown so strong so fast. You smile now, you laugh. Make friends and thrive. Play music. Music, Shinji. That’s your freedom, don’t you see? I’ve never left you, not truly ever: those bars of unwritten music are calling to you. That’s a story that hasn’t been written. The imprint of a life on the cusp of taking direction. The course of a life worth living, if only you’d blot it down on the page. You’ve come too far to hesitate now.”

“But… even so, you’ve been the one source of light in my life. Of true change. Now that I’ve found you again… I am strong enough on my own, and I can find love and I can find praise. But it doesn’t hold the meaning that you do; I don’t care what you are or what you have been because I love who you are, all of you, your entire identity. You’re someone worth fighting for.”

The tears of the past four years flow with ease.

Such a curséd number.

He laughed with warmth, the way I remembered. “My life isn’t worth all of humanity. It isn’t worth the life you’ve been able to live. Shinji, didn’t you hear me? I’ve never left you, I won’t. But I can’t continue like this. You’ve made it, don’t you see? Broken out of that chrysalis of self-loathing and self-limiting and emerged as a new person: Shinji Ikari, but better. Happier. Empowered. And I… I need to be reborn as well. I need to start again. Before the powers of being an Angel arise. I need to start again.”

“Autumn came again.” I replied quietly. “For once I appreciate summer, the warmth of the season and how alive it makes people feel. It’s… perspective, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Death… the pain that comes with it… it’s all necessary. To appreciate life, being alive, feeling happiness and joy. The sand of time keeps falling, even if we beg it otherwise. The wheels of the Earth keep grinding. Renewal. Do you understand? I’ve never left you, and I will find you again, but you have to allow me that chance. I have made my choice; will you honor it just once more?”

I soaked up every ounce of him with that last kiss, pressed the memory of every touch and sensation into the well of my memory. Regretted instantly the feel of him pulling away, of complying. “This is goodnight.” I stated. “Not goodbye.”

He was smiling as the flashing of the sirens mirrored his molten red eyes.

We were evacuated by the same crew that brought us into the site. The off base medical tent evaluated us and sent us back home. Our manager relieved us of work for mental recovery for two days. The media went crazy. Within months the wrecking balls came and demolished what was left of the facility. It was never officially determined what had caused the explosion.

The UN hired me at the termination of my internship, diploma in hand. I worked steadily and with a dedication and passion that no one had anticipated. I persevered because I knew there was something to work towards. The ink fell freely from my pen as though the cork in my mind had been extracted. Emotion, confidence, creativity, inspiration – all the things I thought I didn’t possess – came with abandon, filling up the margins and the scraps of what remained of my journal. I handed it in with a smile and never looked back.  
Winter emerged in the months that followed, the first recorded one in three and a half decades. Adults and children stood agape in the streets as the first flakes of snow began to fall, licking at the streets and bathing the world in its wet and icy glory. A baptism of the new world. 

The chords came together in sporadic expulsions of musical ecstasy. Melodies caught on my tongue and begged for me to write them down. So I did. Every last one of them. Filled up the five lines that comprised the story of _us_ , even if no one else knew it. People took notice, somehow. Perhaps the shadow of the old Shinji Ikari had spurred it on, and for once the existence of that old identity was welcome. ‘The Shore’ sold to a private industry for far more than I ever could have dreamed. Performers ate it up, and the royalties came sweeping in. It wasn’t the same as words, but it was my debut as _this_ Shinji Ikari – the one that bore his soul to the world without fear.

The promise never alludes me and the swells of my music filling the halls of other theatres keeps me on course. I look everywhere, take in everything. Feel and grow and appreciate. Observe life all around me in all stages, all forms. The vibrancy of it, no matter how old the vessel its housed in. The bright fires of existence in each individual.

And then.

I find him.

The agents give me curious looks and I can sense the doubt and uncertainty in their movements. My income satisfies them, and so they hold their tongues. I don’t blame them for their concerns, I know that I am young. That the weight of my decision will only make me lose that youth faster. I apply with vigor. The interviews blur by in one frenzied flash of time. The whir of work, of friendship, of responsibility capitulate about until finally I see him.

And then.

Everything stops, just like it always does. Slows down to the calm breathes and the individual heartbeat. To the sheer joy of unconditional love.

His little hand slips into mine without hesitation, trunk hoisted along beside him. I embrace him and take hold of his luggage. Just beyond the toddler years, his hair isn’t as long as I remember yet and his eyes don’t hold the heavy weight of knowing. But this is Kaworu, my Nagisa, my Ikari and the grin he gives me as we head to the train station makes it all worth it. 

With five little fingers he places his unwavering trust in me, gripping onto my hand.

With seventeen muscles he smiles at me, a bright, unrestrained toothy grin.

Things aren’t easy. Raising a kid never is.

I’m not running, not any more. We are healing.


End file.
